Photograph by Marcbela (Marc N. Belanger), Public domain. Via
Wikimedia Commons.
North Abington Depot
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1976. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“North Abington station is a former railroad station in North Abington, Massachusetts. It is located across from the intersection of Harrison Avenue and Railroad Street, along what is today the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's Plymouth/Kingston Line, and is now home to the Abington Depot restaurant.”
Wikipedia article North Abington station, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 93 National Register listings in Plymouth County · listed in 1976 · category: Building · one of 1 National Historic Landmarks in Plymouth County.
National Register reference number.76001612- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Parish in Abington Center where are also located the New Jerusalem Church, the First Universalist Church, the Catholic Church and the General Church of the New Jerusalem. In North Abington is the Fourth Congregational Church, the First Baptist, and in the West part, the Methodist. At Rockland is the First Congregational Church, setoff from the First Parish in 1812, the First Baptist Church, Methodist Church, Unitarian Church, Catholic Church and Christian Science Church. At Whitman is the First Congregational Church, set off from the First Parish in 1807, the First Baptist Church, the Methodist Church, the Unitarian Church, the Catholic Church, the Advent Christian Church and the Episcopal Church.
There are two railroad stations in Abington, one at the Center and one at the North, one in Rockland and two in Whitman. From Abington there are 14 trains to Boston each day, the average running time being 43 minutes; and 7 to Plymouth, and on Sundays 4 trains. North Abington and Whitman have in addition one express train each way. Rockland has 12 trains a day the average runningtime being 44 minutes. In addition to the above there are additional trains on Saturdays and during the summer. Electric cars run to all adjoining towns and give half -hourly connection with the City of Brockton, and in the summer time with Nantasket Beach and other summer resorts.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 422 fires within 5 miles of North Abington Depot between
2015 and 2020, burning about 192 acres in total. 4 started naturally. 4 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Debris and open burning
203
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
110
Recreation and ceremony
49
Smoking
26
Misuse of fire by a minor
24
Natural
4
Arson/incendiarism
4
Fireworks
2
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 1,480 specimens
collected within 10 miles of North Abington Depot between 1836 and
1975: 764 Plantae, 434 Fungi, 254 Animalia, 13 Protozoa, 11 Chromista, 4 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by (MARSDEN, H W), A. A. Eaton, A. B. Seymour and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
18 workings within 5 miles of North Abington Depot: 11 past producers, 7 producers.
7 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Granite, Stone, Crushed/Broken. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
North Abington, the town this property stands in, in 1 storm report between 2013 and 2013: 1 thunderstorm wind.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
3,110 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Statement of significance
/ARCHITECT Bradford Lee Gilbert The North Abington Depot is significant both for its architectural quality and for its connection with the famous Abington Riot. This riot resulted in a significant court case which is still quoted as a precedent in the field of jurisprudence. The building was designed by Bradford Lee Gilbert and built in 1893-4. Gilbert was a medal winner at the Columbian Exposition of 1893, and was the supervising architect for the Cotton States and International Exposition of 1895, but he specialized in railroad stations and other public buildings. The depot is Richardsonian in style, and as Hitchcock points out in his book "Architecture of H. H. Richardson and His Times" many of Richardson's followers were more Richardsonian than Richardson himself.
The North Abington Depot is small, and has deteriorated over the years, but it still retains its architectural quality and integrity. The station was built as a peace offering to the town after the "North Abington Riot." The Riot was a confrontation between a large railroad company and the local street- car line. The railroad had been owned by a local company, the Old Colony, for 48 years, but because of the depression of 1892-93, the Old Colony was forced to let its holdings in January of 1893 to the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company- The New Haven inherited a number of costly problems when it took over the Old Colony line, including a dangerous crossing in Brockton.
As the result of a bad accident at the crossing involving a train and a streetcar, the New Haven voted in February of 1893 to spend $l million to rebuild the crossing on two levels, and more importantly, to refuse any other requests for streetcar tracks to cross their right-of-ways.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 76001612, 12 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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